


Double Negative

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Moon Knight (Comics), Punisher (Comics), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 00:44:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18435518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Really, David's going to have to get Marc a Thank You card.





	Double Negative

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kokopellifacetattoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokopellifacetattoo/gifts).



> cyberpunk AU, so David is of course the amazing fusion of comics! and Netflix! Micro designs.

Honestly, David doesn’t have time to direct Marc to sit; he barely has eyes for anything but the distressing way Frank’s augmented arm is hanging loose and unnatural at his side, sparking at the joint of the elbow. Frank’s face is one of concentrated agony, even if he’s still moving under his own steam, and David wants to get him on the table as quickly as possible.

Marc lingering by the stairs isn’t exactly unusual anyway. Marc often lurks around on his feet when he’s down here, so even if David offered him a seat, it’s a coin-toss as to whether he’d take it or not.

“Okay just lay down, I’ll grab some scissors and cut the rest of -- or just rip it off, okay fine, fair.”

“Have I ever needed your help taking a shirt off?” Frank snarks back, hopping up on the work table with a barely concealed wince. His arm is obviously the worst off, but David can’t help wondering what else is damaged.

“You’re right, I forget you prefer to move fast.”

“What, you want me to buy you dinner first, Lieberman?”

The banter is snappy but, thankfully, Frank’s tone remains strained only by pain. That’s good; whatever pain he’s in, it mustn’t be too terribly bad or his attitude would be way worse. And if it were nearly as bad as David at first worried, he’d be clammed up entirely.

“And ruin this delightfully casual thing we’ve got going?” David starts setting tools up on the tray beside the workbench, surgical precision so he can grab what he needs without looking. A few that he might need Frank to hold in place he sets on Frank’s bare chest, an old arrangement that definitely has nothing to do with David’s latent fascination with the neat swell of Frank’s overly toned pectorals. “Though if you don’t fall asleep after, I wouldn’t say no to a nosh.”

Frank grumbles something and makes a vague gesture with his less injured arm, and David can’t help noticing that the knuckles are bloody, deeply abraded in several spots. He keeps telling Frank he needs to wrap his fist before he beats the shit out of people, he’s only got one flesh hand left now, but when has anyone ever listened to him. He’s just the repair guy.

Maybe it’s nerves that makes David banter so easily with Frank. He’s not nervous _of_ Frank, not anymore; he’s nervous _for_ him, because David is many things, but chiefly he’s an idiot with a tendency to cling. And he, for better or worse, has found himself clinging to Frank, a man who kills people almost daily.

Except they’re bad people, the people Frank goes after; they’re monsters, the worst of the worst. Frank hunts down evil people, clears them out because it’s obvious that the institutions they’re supposed to trust to deal those elements of society simply won’t. They’re incapable at best and colluding with that evil at worst, leaving people like Marc and Frank to the job of trying to make the world a little safer.

Or, at the very least, that’s the easiest way to think of it. David has a hard time imagining that any of those people think they’re really the bad guys, no matter how vile their actions might be. No one, and David’s met a fair number of desperate people, ever really thinks of themselves as villain. People can justify a lot if it means seeing the best in themselves.

And so people like David, who care too much but lack the courage and the fortitude to do anything really proactive, have to take the supportive roles. Frank can’t repair himself, not in any long-term way, and David is happy to help because he believes in Frank, and because he trusts him.

“A’right, stay flat. I’m gonna hook the monitors up, fire up a signal blocker to mute the pain without having to disconnect the sensory feedback system…” he trails off, hands moving easy even as he catches the grim look on Frank’s face. It’s a ‘shut up, David’ look, and he reads that loud and clear.

Judging by the blood drying to the side of Frank’s face, slicked down from some wound on his scalp, Frank’s probably got a fresh headache, and even if he doesn’t, he doesn’t always like the running commentary thing. He nods and makes a simple zipping-the-lips gesture and gets to work.

David can’t see Marc raise an eyebrow, but he can hear it in his tone as he asks dryly, “So, how long have you two been fucking?”

It’s the kind of offhand comment that, David thinks, if this were a movie or maybe a book, he’d choke on his spit and Frank would make a bunch of defensive noise. As it is, he just feels his face heat up a little, and decides to just ignore the plainly considering sound Frank makes as he’s unhooking his broken rig from the shoulder ports.

“Ahh,” Marc drawls, sounding vaguely disappointed, and David, raises his own brows, focusing on severing connections in the proper order, quick and clean without making it any more unpleasant for Frank than he has to. Taking the whole rig off is never pleasant, and David already can tell he’s going to have to peel back the mesh that protects all the ports to make sure whatever trashed the rig itself didn’t damage the living meat everything connected to. “You’re _not_.”

“Of course we’re not,” David says tightly, and again, he’s going to ignore the vague, inquisitive sound Frank makes at that, and definitely not going to think about the way his brows have drawn together like he’s confused. Nope, David is going to pay attention to his work, thank you. “I’m -- I can’t be his repair guy and be sleeping with him, it’s… definitely not ethical. Probably.”

The rig finally disconnects. Even the light, durable metal he’s used to frame and structure this one is denser, ultimately heavier, than a flesh arm -- not that David’s been handling too many severed human limbs, mind -- and at nearly twenty pounds, the sound of it thunking full onto the table as it comes free is loud.

Loud enough to mostly cover the low scoff Marc gives, but not quite. But, well, if David can ignore the way Frank’s looking at him, confused and questioning and way more interested than he’s got any right to be when he’s bloody and missing an arm, he can sure as hell ignore the smart ass lurking by the stairs.

“Very interesting that you’ve got an excuse all rationalized though,” Marc says, and it’s a taunt even if his tone is absentminded. He hasn’t been coming here long, and never without Frank, but he teases and jibes at (and, admittedly, with) David as easily as he might if they were old friends. Usually David appreciates it; it adds some measure of fun to a situation that’s often stressful and worrying. Keeps David’s mind off the spiral of wondering how responsible, ultimately, he should consider himself for Frank’s injuries when he’s the one who keeps getting him back in fighting shape.

Tonight, he’s a little relieved when Marc goes silent, fading into the background while David moves the wreck of Frank’s prosthetic to one of the smaller work tables and sets about getting under the live-mesh of Frank’s shoulder to see the damage. If there’s too much tissue damage, it’s going to make things way harder, but Frank’s been lucky before.

For a given value of lucky.

Peeling back the silvery false flesh, David wrinkles his nose and gets to work. With the rig off and the sensory feedback dampened, he can prod around at the plugs and ports set into the meat of Frank’s shoulder without causing the man much extra pain, and he’s relieved to find that the actual tissue seems relatively undamaged. There’s some bleeding around the main anchors, and David doesn’t like to think about how much it must have hurt, having twenty pounds of sparking, damaged, unusable machinery hanging from his scarred shoulder.

He definitely doesn’t think about the shaky way Frank’s breath catches when he presses against the border tissue between the live-mesh and his skin, because he’s just a repair guy and he's got his priorities in order.

After a few minutes, when David’s focus has narrowed down to the delicate wiring that allows the sensory feedback system in the rig to hook into Frank’s spine, and thus into his nervous system, Marc makes a bored little noise, and then asks, “You guys do this in silence every time?”

“Sometimes he sings,” Frank says flatly, and god help him, David’s shoulders shake a little as he tries not to laugh. “You really don’t want to encourage him.”

“Frank, I’m gonna steal a line from you,” David says, making himself frown as he looks up. “Shut the fuck up.”

Marc laughs, and it’s nice, it is, almost nice enough to forgive him when he says, “Well, since you have your ethics so firmly moored I suppose it’s safe to leave you two unchaperoned. I have some things I want to follow up on alone, anyway. You know where to find me, Frank.”

The noise Frank makes is noncommittal enough to make David wonder where his mind is at but he does raise his remaining arm in a half-assed wave while David continues working. He listens to Marc’s heavy steps fade as he goes up the stairs. He thinks maybe the weird tension will fade when it’s just the usual dynamic of them alone in the work space, Frank injured and David patching him up.

In reality, the sound of the door at the top of the stairs shutting seems to cement that tension in place, and David finds himself unable to look away from his own hands as he works, knowing that Frank is watching in that way he has where he’s trying to catch David’s eye. He’s not slick, but then again David supposes he isn’t any better, studiously refusing to look up.

But they’ve had awkward moments before. That fuckshit a few months back, getting the sensory feedback hardware activated and upgraded, where David’s 90% certain Frank ran to the bathroom to jack off after? Never spoken of, not by either of them, which was fine. Sometimes maintaining a healthy friendship means not talking about random erections and how they’re dealt with.

“So, uh.”

“Oh, god,” David grumbles, pulling away with a sigh. If they’re going to do this, he’s not going to do it with his hands trapped in Frank’s shoulder. The look of irritable apprehension on Frank’s face is a little bit of a surprise; it’s very like the pissy look he gets when he tries to argue a point that David refuses to back down on; vaguely affronted and slightly expectant.

For a moment, they just look at each other, until David finally gestures, tool in hand. “What?”

He expects the glare he gets, and almost thinks Frank’s going to give mercy to them both and drop the subject with appropriately bitter avoidance. Then, Frank’s expression relaxing marginally -- a lot for him -- he dives straight into the meat of it.

“The… ethics thing aside,” he says, and despite that shocking attempt at tact, David very suddenly needs to look anywhere but at Frank, “do you want to fuck me?”

And David, idiot that he is, knows there’s no way in hell he can lie to Frank just as much as he knows there’s no way he can be completely honest. He feels his face heat up, and his eyes are firmly focused on the tips of the forceps in his hand. He has to say _something_ , and he feels a lot like he’s panicking, every option bad.

“I don’t _not_ want to fuck you,” he replies, and winces at his own stupidity.

Again, that considering noise, almost the same as the one he’d made when Marc had started this whole issue. “Double negative,” he points out, and he’s smirking when David finally makes himself look at his face. “I can work with that.”

“Buddy, you’re short an arm and your face is covered in blood, so I don’t think this is really --”

Frank is always faster than David expects, and even down an arm and wounded he’s unpredictable and strong. He tangles his fingers, knuckles split and scabbed, into the front of David’s shirt, hauling him down and close, so David’s gut presses hard into the edge of the table. It can’t be comfortable, because Frank has to twist the stump of his shoulder down toward the worktable to manage it, and even with the pain blockers active, that’s still a lot of raw nodes to be pressing into anything.

“Pretty sure we can just about manage, Lieberman,” he growls, and his eyes are sparked with something warm and challenging, and it’s not in David to struggle as he’s pulled the rest of the way in, hand not clutching a tool bracing against the edge of the table as Frank fucking Castle smothers any protest he might think of with a kiss.

Really, he thinks, tilting his head to a more comfortable angle, he’s going to have to get Marc a Thank You card.


End file.
